Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

Weather: Forecasts

lord jopling: To ask Her Majesty's Government how they monitor the accuracy of weather forecasts issued by the Meteorological Office; and whether the accuracy of forecasts has (1) increased, (2) decreased, or (3) remained the same during the last five years.

lord duncan of springbank: The core task of the Met Office is to deliver the Public Weather Service (PWS). The PWS Customer Group (PWSCG), which has an independent chair responsible to the Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, monitors the delivery of the PWS against agreed performance indicators and targets, including the accuracy of public facing forecasts. Over the last 5 years, the PWSCG has set targets each year for the accuracy of forecasts for maximum and minimum temperature, 3 hourly temperature, wind speed and wind direction at days 1, 3, and 5 ahead. During this period the accuracy of all these forecasts has increased. In addition, the Met Office has a performance indicator that compares the accuracy of its global forecast model against other global modelling centres to demonstrate that it is maintaining its position in global forecast accuracy. Over the last 5 years the Met Office has maintained its position as the leading national meteorological service.

Fracking

lord greaves: To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to revoke the moratorium on fracking.

lord duncan of springbank: The Government have no plans to revoke the moratorium on shale gas extraction. The Government has always been clear that we will take a precautionary approach and only support shale gas exploration if it can be done in a safe and sustainable way, and that we will be led by the science on whether this is indeed possible. It remains our policy to be guided by the evidence and to minimise disturbance to those living and working nearby to shale gas exploration sites, and to prevent the risk of any damage. The moratorium will be maintained unless compelling new evidence is provided which addresses the concerns around the prediction and management of induced seismicity.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

India: Nationality

lord singh of wimbledon: To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the comments bythe Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights that the Citizenship (Amendment) Act 2019 is fundamentally discriminatory against Muslims, what representations they are making to the government of India about ensuring equal treatment of people of all faiths when granting citizenship.

lord ahmad of wimbledon: The British High Commission in New Delhi and our network of Deputy High Commissions across India are following reports on the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens, as well as the Government of India’s response. We raise our concerns with the Government of India where appropriate. I discussed the Government of India’s intent with, and popular response to, the CAA with India’s Minister of State for External Affairs on 19 December 2019. The British High Commissioner in New Delhi also raised this issue with the Indian Government on 6 January.

Department of Health and Social Care

Accident and Emergency Departments: Standards

lord hunt of kings heath: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect the NHS to meet the four hour accident and emergency waiting time target.

lord hunt of kings heath: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect the NHS to meet the Consultant Led Treatment waiting time target.

baroness blackwood of north oxford: Demand on the National Health Service hospitals continues to grow, with an increase in attendances to accident and emergency of over 6% in December 2019 compared to December 2018. Despite this increase in demand, the NHS continues to provide high quality care, and is seeing more people than ever before, in a timely manner.The NHS Long Term Plan sets out our plans for transformation and improvement across the NHS. In the shorter term, the NHS Accountability Framework for 2019-20 outlines how NHS England and NHS Improvement will continue ongoing service development so that performance is maintained and improved, including with the commencement of the redesign of outpatient services.Further to this, at the Government’s request, NHS England and NHS Improvement is also working with clinical leaders across the system to review our performance standards and will update on this in due course.

Department for International Development

International Crisis Group: Finance

lord naseby: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the International Crisis Group is in receipt of any Government funding; and if so, whether that funding is provided to the charity (1) in general, or (2) for specific projects.

baroness sugg: The International Crisis Group (ICG) receives DFID funding through UK Aid Connect. UK Aid Connect supports programmes led by consortia of diverse organisations to create solutions to complex problems facing the poorest people. ICG is a partner within the Smart Peace programme led by Conciliation Resources and receives funding to carry out particular work within that programme.Overall funding to the Smart Peace programme is £11.9m for the period 2018-2022. The consortium combines expertise in conflict analysis, community dialogue, elite mediation, evaluation, policy influence and behavioural science to deliver targeted and adaptive conflict resolution interventions in Central African Republic (CAR), Myanmar and Nigeria.

Overseas Aid

baroness tonge: To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to retain (1) the Department for International Development as a separate Whitehall department, with a Secretary of State for International Development, and (2) the Independent Commission for Aid Impact.

baroness sugg: All Machinery of Government changes are a matter for the Prime Minister.The integrated defence, security, and foreign policy review will create the opportunity to reimagine how the UK engages internationally in the context of Global Britain. DFID is proactively supporting this work.

Department for Education

Coventry University

lord patten: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the benefits to Coventry University of having, in addition to the vice-chancellor, five deputy vice-chancellors, eight pro-vice-chancellors and seven assistant pro-vice-chancellors.

baroness berridge: Effective management of a university and meeting the demands of high-quality teaching, research and delivering quality outcomes for students is a complex task. Decisions on the structure of leadership teams or the job titles within any institutional hierarchy are an issue of institutional autonomy. However, students and taxpayers all contribute to our higher education system, and rightly expect value for money. We have set up the regulator, the Office for Students (OfS), to regulate the higher education sector and ensure it is delivering real value for money. Where issues with senior staff pay lead to concern, the OfS has power to carry out independent reviews of a provider’s governance to ensure that these arrangements are fit for purpose.

Universities: Crime

lord taylor of warwick: To ask Her Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with UK Universities about reports that universities are not reporting crime statistics.

baroness berridge: Criminal acts and misconduct are unacceptable in our world-leading universities, which should be safe and inclusive environments. Universities are autonomous institutions, and it is for each provider to determine what information should be collected and reported. Institutions have no statutory requirement to report crime statistics but have a responsibility to ensure students feel safe and able to report incidents, and to provide robust policies and procedures to address all forms of misconduct. Current recorded crime statistics cover incidents reported to police. Where an institution (or the victim themselves) report the matter to the police it will be recorded and therefore captured in crime statistics. The government is aware that third party organisations collate data relating to incidents reported as taking place in Higher Education Providers (HEPs) and officials monitor this information. The government expects providers to keep records of incidents disclosed to them and act swiftly to investigate and address them, with police involvement where necessary. Effective data collection processes enable HEPs to review and analyse reported incidents and complaints to inform continuous improvement. HEPs should continue to break down barriers to reporting, to ensure students and staff feel safe and able to report incidents. The government continues to work closely with Universities UK (UUK) on implementing its Changing the Culture framework. The most recent progress report, published in October 2019, showed that 72% of responding institutions had developed or improved recording of data on incidents with a more centralised approach. UUK are also supporting HEPs in handling misconduct and criminal offences, including working with the Police Association of Higher Education Liaison Officers to explore how to best support information sharing between police forces and universities, and government officials meet regularly with UUK representatives.

Department for Work and Pensions

Employment: Disability

lord shinkwin: To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of job outcomes for disabled people that can be definitively attributed to the Disability Confident Scheme; and what methodology they used to support that estimate.

lord shinkwin: To ask Her Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of (1) total employers, and (2) the total workforce, in the UK who fall within the Disability Confident Scheme.

lord shinkwin: To ask Her Majesty's Government what evidence there is that organisations signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme (1) are more inclusive of disabled employees and jobseekers, and (2) employ disabled people in larger numbers, than employers who have not signed up to that scheme.

lord shinkwin: To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the briefing by Kim Hoque and Nick BaconResponse to the UK Government's reforms of Disability Confident level 3, published in November 2019.

baroness stedman-scott: The analysis and recommendations in ‘A Response to the UK Government's reforms of Disability Confident level 3’ are a useful contribution to the debate about the future policy development of Disability Confident. On 6 January 2020, Department for Work and Pensions officials met with the authors, Kim Hoque and Nick Bacon, and Philip Connolly of the Leonard Cheshire organisation, to discuss the report. In November 2018, we published the results of survey research commissioned from Ipsos MORI, which explored the effect that signing up to the Disability Confident scheme had on recruitment and retention attitudes towards disabled people. Half of all employers interviewed for the study said they had recruited at least one person with a disability, long-term health or mental health condition as a result of joining the scheme. Among larger employers, nearly two thirds reported the same. It was not technically possible to compare employers who are signed up to Disability Confident with other employers not signed up to the scheme but otherwise similar in every way. As at 31 December 2019, over 15,000 employers had signed up to Disability Confident. We are not able to accurately estimate the total workforce currently working for Disability Confident organisations.

Department for International Trade

WTO Dispute Settlement Body: Judges

baroness hooper: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure the necessary appointments of new judges are made to the World Trade Organisation Dispute Settlement Body in order to be able to enforce any rulings on international trade disputes.

the earl of courtown: The UK is a strong supporter of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) dispute settlement system. The UK continues to support resolution of the impasse and the appointment of dispute settlement appeal-adjudicators. The UK has actively participated in discussions at the WTO since January 2019 aimed at relaunching such appointments, and the Rt Hon Conor Burns MP, Minister of State, was personally at the WTO, on the first working day of 2020, to affirm our support for the international rules-based system.In December 2019, the Director-General of WTO announced that he would conduct more intensive consultations with WTO Members towards this goal. The UK will engage closely in these consultations.The UK has engaged on this issue in other fora such as the World Economic Forum, G7, G20, Commonwealth, and OECD Ministerial Council meeting.

Trade Agreements: Japan

lord allen of kensington: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they anticipatemakinga trade agreement with Japan.

the earl of courtown: Our exit from the EU provides an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen our relationship with Japan, which is among the UK government’s priority countries for negotiating a bilateral trade deal. Both parties have agreed that they will work quickly to build a new economic partnership and we have already laid the groundwork for a future negotiation through our call for input which ran between 20 September and 4 November 2019.